


little worlds

by aijee



Category: Pentagon (Korea Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe – Modern Setting, M/M, Romance, Schmoop, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-21
Updated: 2018-08-21
Packaged: 2019-06-30 12:26:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15751650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aijee/pseuds/aijee
Summary: Every Friday, at exactly 6:15 PM, the same customer, in some aggressively colorful sweater, enters the restaurant. He doesn’t speak Japanese.(Or: Hyunggu becomes a regular at the Adachi family ramen shop. Yuto becomes a regular in Hyunggu’s life.)





	little worlds

**Author's Note:**

> was hungry for some noods  
> got some mushy kito instead

  

Like many things about working at a small ramen place, the premise for this story is simple.

Every Friday, at exactly 6:15 PM, the same customer, in some aggressively colorful sweater, enters the restaurant. He doesn’t speak Japanese.

After hooking his badge-covered canvas backpack on the coat stand, the customer sits at the bar stool right next to the drinks fridge. It takes only one sip of barley tea before he’s served his usual: a tonkotsu bowl, extra bamboo shoots, and no beansprouts. With complete faith in the broth, he goes straight in for the noodles.

 _“Oishii!”_ he always says after that. Yuto lied; this customer speaks a little Japanese, or has learned, at least, after so many visits. “Food, very good, always,” is added, stubbornly still in Japanese, with two emphatic thumbs-up.

“You’re welcome,” Yuto responds, trying his best not to smile too widely lest he look like that Nakamoto guy from across the street. “I’m happy you like it.”

The customer’s name is Kino. Here is how Yuto meets him.

 

 

 

**1**

Like many things about working at a small ramen place, Yuto’s life is simple.

Wake up, help run the family business, go to sleep, repeat. It doesn’t sound exciting on paper, sure, but when contentment is a luxury and the job market is The Hunger Games, Yuto is grateful to be on the luckier and _alive_ end of the figurative life-or-death spectrum.

Correction: Yuto’s life is quite simple—until Kino comes in.

Kino doesn’t come in as the Kino in bright sweaters and brighter eyes, rather some young, lost tourist sulking at one of Nagano train station’s convenience stores.

It’s not hard to tell that the guy is a foreigner. Lucky for him, Yuto knows a little bit of Korean (which, excuse you, has nothing to do with his middle school SHINee phase _whatsoever_ ), or at least enough Korean to swim through a simple conversation.

“Need help?” Yuto asks.

Any anxiety about thick accents and mispronunciation immediately dissipates at the sheer, unadulterated awe in the guy’s face.

“I’ve never needed help more in my life,” he says as if he’s speaking to God’s own personal messenger. “I don’t understand a diggity dang _thing_ about these subway systems! I have been on and off trains for the past _three hours_ because I have the memory of Dory’s brain-dead cousin so I can never remember whatever I’m told by information desk people—bless their souls—and now I’m here and my itinerary and my mom are _furious_ at me because I’m so off-schedule when all I wanted to do was visit this stupid ramen shop downtown that I saw floating around on the Internet—"

“Ramen place?” Yuto interrupts, understanding only that much. Self-teaching and K-pop lyrics can only get him so far, he supposes. “Only one there.”

“Really?” the stranger says, positively glowing with relief. “Do you mind taking me there?

Yuto blinks. His eyes must be straining from the lights and definitely not from this guy’s Resting Smile Face.

“Sure,” Yuto says. His mouth curls a little. “I’m going there, too.”

 

 

**2**

When Yuto gets home, school has started again, the leaves have turned, and that one Korean guy from before has come back. For some reason.

“You still work here,” the customer declares, tone an indeterminable mixture of surprise, hesitation, and maybe even relief if Yuto isn’t being too delusional. The guy is wearing an almost neon shade of orange. “I thought you were just a part-time student worker.”

“Family ramen shop,” Yuto replies in rusty, Google Translate-echoed Korean. “Did you get lost on your way here?”

“…no.”

“Don’t worry, just teasing. You will eat?”

“Oh, yes, of course!”

The customer pulls the beanie from his head, revealing a nest of shiny black tangles and fly-away strands, like a bird that’s gone through a rather tumultuous migration season.

“Same as before?” Yuto asks, already wiping a bowl.

“You remember my order?”

“You remember I’m here.”

“That’s not the same.”

“I think it is.”

When he doesn’t hear an answer, Yuto starts filling up a bowl with broth, noodles, and all classic fix-ins of a tonkotsu bowl before setting it down in front of the customer—whose face looks as twisted as his hair. It’s cute.

“Order is wrong?” Yuto asks.

“I’m Kino,” the guy blurts out before promptly settling further into his seat. “I didn’t get the chance to say that. Since then.”

Since he entered the shop? Or since they met last year? Yuto can’t say.

“Last time,” Yuto says, “You said your memory is bad. You remember the ramen, and you remember me. You will remember my name, too?”

Kino’s face rounds out with his smile, Yuto notices. It makes him look younger, almost like he’s a high school student, or an adult stuck in the immortality of his youth.

“Definitely,” Kino says, flushed cheeks pushing into his eyes.

Yuto inclines his head. “Adachi Yuto. Nice to see you again.”

Kino smiles even wider. It’s as if he ensures that Yuto gets a good look before digging right into the noodles.

A slurp, a swallow, a sigh.

“God, it’s just as I remember. This is absolutely—"

 

 

**3**

“—delicious. How do you say it in Japanese?”

“Simplest way is _oishii._ Why?”

“No particular reason. Oh, by the way, can I get extra bamboo? And no beansprouts this time.”

“Picky habits.”

“Hey! That’s…not untrue.”

 

 

**4**

Yuto finally notices that Kino always sits in the same place: in the tight corner right next to the drinks fridge. During a particularly busy dinner rush, Yuto’s sister, blush fierce, had to awkwardly reach over him every time another customer asked for a soda or beer or juice. This seat also happens to be the one closest to the toppings and broth stations. Which Yuto is in charge of.

He tries not to think much about it, even if it’s a bit of a slow Friday.

“I’m an exchange student studying nearby,” Kino explains. Today is a pastel pink crewneck eccentrically stitched with cacti. “I used to live in Japan when I was really young, but it was only for a few months before I moved back to Korea. I guess I’m also here to reconnect with that past.”

“How much Japanese you speak?”

“Only a little, but,” Kino says, eyes crinkling, “But I’m learning more every day.”

Yuto looks away. Maybe the tightness behind his collarbones will loosen up. He rubs the back of his neck. That’s tight, too.

“What do you study?” he asks, hoping to divert attention away from himself.

“Agriculture! I’m part of a newly-developed exchange program between my Korean uni and the one I’m attending in Ueda.”

“Hobbies?”

“Hm…you guess!”

“Growing herbs and tomato plants. Then give them names, like children.”

Kino giggles something sweet and warm, like honey tea or milky hot chocolate on a cool, autumn day. Yuto coughs and readjusts his bandana.

“I’d love to if I had the space. Becoming attached to inanimate things sounds like something I would do,” Kino says with a grin to his voice. “I actually like writing things—songs, poetry, stories. Anything that helps me figure things out.”

“Example.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Show me example next time,” Yuto explains, nicking a bowl from the high shelves above the noodle boilers. “When here is not so busy.”

Kino scoffs. “I don’t think that’ll ever happen.”

The hour is getting later and customer numbers are picking up quickly. Somewhere, in the midst of the intensifying Japanese chatter, Yuto can’t help but imagine Kino pressing his palms to his cheeks to cool them down. It seems like something he would do.

“When it does,” Yuto says, firm, “I will be here.”

“Good for me then,” Kino says, even firmer, “Because I love travelling.”

 

 

**5**

“Right now,” Yuto starts, not looking at Kino directly but there’s an off-season Christmas sweater in the corner of Yuto’s eye. “You live in Ueda.”

Kino sips at his barley tea. “I do.”

“Every week, you come to Nagano city.”

“Mhm.”

“You visit friends here?”

“I, well. Kind of.

Yuto is reticent by nature and unobtrusive by nurture, but Kino’s insatiability is a potent thing. Enough to start affecting Yuto, too.

In the beat of silence, Kino looks up, sees Yuto’s skepticism, and laughs.

“I’m mostly here for myself,” Kino says, resting his chin on his palm. “I’m a city sheep, born and bred on concrete. Nagano city caters to that side of me better than Ueda does.”

Yuto nods. “But you get lost, and are more stubborn when lost.”

There’s a bark of laughter that, later that night, will ring inside of Yuto’s skull until it’s the only thing he thinks of before he falls asleep.

“M’mom tells me that more often then I’d care to admit. Besides,” Kino says, finishing off his tea with a sigh, “I can’t stay in one place for too long. I have a restless soul.”

There is a practiced longing in his eyes—a distant look focused on something that seems so far away. Yuto wonders where that might be.

 

 

**6**

“The sky,” Kino says. “Have you seen it?”

At the broth pots, Yuto looks confused. “I always see sky.”

“I mean right now,” Kino clarifies with a laugh. “It’s so beautiful right now.”

There’s something in Yuto that warms his blood, makes him want to rip off the safety of his apron and run into the afternoon-evening limbo to catch a glimpse of what someone so beautiful would stop to admire.

Yuto doesn’t.

A few more customers file into the shop when the thought arises. Yuto’s dad shouts something welcoming at sound of the door chimes, and Yuto’s brothers are working hard to serve those who’ve rung those chimes earlier, and earlier, and earlier than that. They are all still here, trading jokes and fishing mishaps with the boys.

Someone yells “a beer please!” and Yuto’s sister calls out an affirmation in the town-famous voice lilt that gets the high schoolers in the corner more excited than Yuto would like. Upstairs, Yuto’s mother is still recovering from a bug she’d gotten from the last rainstorm, but she’ll definitely be throwing around that iron fist soon and, honestly, Yuto can’t wait.

This world he lives in feels small, familiar, if not monotonous sometimes. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s comfortable. He feels like he’s home.

“Hey Yuto,” Kino says, “Can I get an order of gyoza and rice, too?”

Besides, every week, this small world gets a small taste of infinity—any more than that would be too much for the quiet shadows that outline this town.

Yuto looks up and sees Kino looking extra cheeky and grinning, dressed in a cotton candy pink and orange creamsicle wool. “To go, if that’s okay.”

“Must be good day,” Yuto says, smirking. “You only order extra when your day is good.”

Kino’s grin widens a little more. “You know me so well.”

 

 

**7**

“Hyunggu.”

“Sorry?”

Yuto points at the name tag hanging onto Kino’s cherry red and cashmere number. It doesn’t say Kino, rather “Kang Hyunggu” in katakana.

“Oh,” Kino says, eyelashes fluttering with the downward motion of his gaze. “I was at a department event earlier today. This is, uh, a friend’s name tag.”

Yuto doesn’t say anything for a while, just observes the pinch between Kino’s brows and the sliver of teeth digging into Kino’s bottom lip. There is no treasure there. The fib is as transparent as his eyes.

“Alright,” Yuto says. “That means you are Hyunggu today, not Kino.”

“What are you talking about?” Kino chuckles out. Instead of eating the noodles, he starts with the broth. “I’m always Kino.”

 

 

**7.5**

“I was a completely different person back then,” Kino waves his hand dismissively, if not a little sour, “When I was in high school.”

“Me too,” Yuto says, nodding. “Shorter. Bad farmer’s tan from football.”

Kino sticks his tongue out, a puffed-out act repurposed for sugarcoating more than indignance. “You know that’s not what I mean.”

Today is a weird day in that it’s a calendar holiday, so the shop is closed for the day. Yuto had expected Kino to know. He didn’t.

Right now, they’re sitting outside the exact same convenience store they first met at—rather, Yuto stopped by after school to grab a drink before his usual routine got shaken up into a…better routine. Yuto nearly slapped the cup noodles out of Kino’s hands when he reached for it, so they’ve settled for a couple rice triangles.

“What do you mean?” Yuto asks through rice and salted salmon. “Back then, always frowning?”

“The opposite, actually.”

Hyunggu—no, Kino—has that distant look in his eyes again, like he’s seeing past Yuto completely even though they’re looking at each other.

“All I did was smile,” Kino says. His rice triangle is still untouched. The seaweed has gone limp. “That’s all people remembered about me back then. That’s all they liked seeing. So that’s all I showed. It felt like, whenever I put on that drab uniform, I had to be Kang Hyunggu, _The_ Kang Hyunggu, with the big teeth and laughter and skinny body and always-straight, too-tight collar. I hated it.”

Kino tugs at the edge of his violently violet sweater. Yuto resists the urge to cradle Kino’s fingers in his own.

“I had to leave as soon as I could. And here I am, I guess.”

“Kino?”

“Yes?”

“Oh, sorry, I mean the name. Doesn’t sound like Hyunggu. Or does it? And I couldn’t notice?”

A loud gush of air escapes Hyunggu’s flatline mouth, and it would have sounded like a soft “pft” if Hyunggu’s lips weren’t sealed so tightly. So. Instead, it ends up sounding like something that would come out the other end, to which, after a beat of awkward silence, Yuto just says, “Oops. Digestion is weird today. You can answer now.”

“You’re actually ridiculous,” Hyunggu wheezes, hovering a hand over his mouth. “I kind of like it.”

Yuto’s face inflames at that.

“Kino is a combination of the ‘K’ from my last name and the word ‘innovation,’” Hyunggu says as he lowers hand, showing just how wide and a little gummy his smile can be. Something in Yuto’s chest swoops at the sight. “Kino is a reinvention of myself, so to speak. Kino is who I’m meant to be, ever since I let Hyunggu become a different person.”

“I see,” Yuto says. “Well, either way—”

He reaches out, places his hand flat on the table where Hyunggu’s own fingers are splayed, until the tips of their fingers are just barely touching.

“—I think the ‘you’ right here is really cool.”

“I,” Hyunggu starts, but doesn’t finish. It’s interesting to see what his face looks like when he’s speechless (spoiler: it’s cute). “You’re…you’re really cool, too.”

 

 

**8**

“Can you tell my sister that?” Yuto groans as he scrubs some questionable grime off his favorite pair of tongs. “These days, she bothers me a lot.”

Hyunggu is on the last of his pork when he asks, “About what?”

“You,” Yuto says, stern. “I think she has a crush on you.”

“Aw, that’s sweet,” Hyunggu coos. “I realized recently that you two look a lot alike.”

“We are related.”

Yuto can sense Hyunggu rolling his eyes, always good-naturedly, always teasing. “She’s pretty,” Hyunggu says, resting his chin over his palm and looking up at Yuto. “Too bad she’s not my type.”

Yuto stops scrubbing. Something bubbles in his throat—a startled cough, maybe a disbelieving laugh, or a question for clarification. He swallows down whatever it fails to become.

Hyunggu pushes on, lips curving maliciously. His rounded cheeks fill into his fingers. “You won’t ask me to continue?”

“There is more to say?”

Maybe it’s an off day for Yuto, or maybe it’s Hyunggu’s blatant flirting, that’s jumbling Yuto’s thoughts. Yuto should have expected that Hyunggu have something up his forest green sleeves. Yuto should have expected that, when he reaches over to take away the empty ramen bowl, Hyunggu would press his fingers, just barely, to Yuto’s quivering knuckles.

Hyunggu presses down a little harder. “There is always more to say.”

 

 

**9**

Yuto shuts him up with a kiss. It’s entirely unrehearsed, shy, and every bit as sweet as Yuto dreamt it to be.

He vaguely registers the scratch of trimmed fingernails at his hips, just barely separated by the thinning cloth of his old music festival tank top. Triangles of cloth rise through curling fingers. The frayed linen is stark against soft wool the color of a tired sun.

“That’s mean,” Hyunggu chastises. His affectionate simper battles the pinch between his brows. “You make it so much harder to leave.”

“I will miss you,” is all Yuto supplies, and he’s not wrong. He really wants to say some iteration of “don’t go” or “don’t forget me,” but the teary glaze in Hyunggu’s eyes urge Yuto otherwise.

Hyunggu must be the same. His lips separate slightly like the miniaturized rendering of a Red Sea parting for words Yuto would gladly follow if he had anything to escape from. He doesn’t.

Hyunggu doesn’t speak, at least not out loud.

Yuto still deciphers the sadness, the bliss, the desire to eat crunchy red bean ice cream after playing _that_ tourist couple at Zenkoji Shrine for the third time that month. Hyunggu had long since become naturalized (for the most part), but it doesn’t hurt to pull out the _“baka gaijin”_ card if it translates to a Buy 1 Get 1 Free frozen dessert.

“I hope you have a safe flight,” Yuto says through the face kiss quota Hyunggu is only now cramming in. What a procrastinator. “You need to go soon. Plane might leave without you.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“Family is waiting for you. They miss you.”

“Will you?”

The question is punctuated with the release of Yuto’s hips, with the upward tilt of a kissable chin and the reflection of Yuto’s dumfounded expression in Hyunggu’s eyes. They narrow slightly, like a challenge—or, rather, a promise, cracked open like a pearl-laden clam in Yuto’s palm.

Yuto only knows ramen, only knows this town and the air he’s breathed for the past two decades. The weight, the rough edges, are terrifyingly foreign.

“I will,” Yuto says, “Miss you. Very much.”

He presses his lips to the sharp, upturned peak of a mountain he never could’ve imagined traversing. He has, but there’s still so much to explore.

“Will you wait for me?” Hyunggu asks again.

“Yes,” Yuto answers, inexplicably glad at how universal the answer is. “Yes.”

 

 

**1(0)**

“Ugh, thank you so, so much for being patient. It’s been a busier day than usual and—”

The words stop cold, or maybe they stop warm. Hyunggu, after all, is the type of person capable of rewriting an idiom entirely.

“Yuto,” Hyunggu sighs out. The Korean intonation is heavy now, ingrained, as if his cultural roots have found new soil in his old home. “What are you doing here?”

“I was looking for a specific Korean barbeque place. Small, family-owned,” Yuto says in intimidatingly fast Japanese, Shinshu dialect and all. “A friend recommended it to me, if I ever visited Korea.”

Hyunggu stills. He is a carved marble statue separated from the chaotic restaurant landscape behind him.

Then, finally, in rusty Japanese: “Good friend."

"More than good, hopefully."

"How many?"

“Table for one?”

“Here, can’t. Two at least,” Hyunggu says, grin sharp and cheeky and every bit as gorgeous as Yuto remembers it.

In the back, a fiercely sleek woman yells something indistinguishable from the register, after which there’s a gruff holler from a heavyset man delivering two jade-colored soju bottles to a table full of already-drunk twenty-somethings. Condensation drips from the glass; it looks like it’s melting.

A young girl, whose features echo Hyunggu’s, sashays to his side to tug at her brother’s awfully yellow sweater and mutter something low, almost secretive. Hyunggu replies in a similar fashion. His sister looks at Yuto with the grip of a music box clasp. Then she’s gone.

“Don’t worry,” Hyunggu says. Yuto swears he’s practically vibrating with excitement. “My break, soon. Ten minutes. Wait a little longer?”

Like many things about working at a small ramen (or _samgyeopsal)_ place, the premise for this story is simple.

This is not Yuto’s home—far from it. Literally.

But, in this little microcosm of mouthwatering pork belly scents and shot glass clinks and round-cheeked, toothy smiles, Yuto is happy to think that he’s close enough to where home could be.

 

**Author's Note:**

> stay hungry, kids
> 
> thank you so so much for reading! i'd love to know what you think!
> 
>  
> 
> [tumblr](https://aijee.tumblr.com)


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